Politics between the decision makers, especially in middle management. I see that quite often. They set a budget and deadline but keep changing requirements, arbitrarily choose systems you have to use but also often avoid making important decisions when needed.
Yes, it certainly isn't partially the responsibility of developers.
Surely it's fine that moaning about how doing design before writing code is boring, a waste of time (because it's "just documentation that won't apply at the end of the project anyway"), or beneath them (it's for people who aren't smart enough to write code). I've heard variations on all of these in person, and seen them in comments here on HN.
Gunning for the big glory of "saving the company" by re-writing the whole thing from scratch in Fancy New Language/Framework X certainly has nothing to do with it, right? This happens more often than some might care to admit.
Engaging in ego-stroking/pissing contests about CS trivia and minutiae instead of focusing on the broader engineering tasks and problems at hands is blame-free, yes?
This industry is absolutely packed with very smart people who, from an engineering perspective, fall quite short, mostly because of their own egos at root.
